If you were living in Western Europe in the late middle ages and early modern age, you might well come across partly eaten humans, whilst walking around in the woods, or even, alas, strolling in Paris. OBVIOUSLY these partly eaten humans had been attacked by werewolves! Duh! There were a lot of real wolves roaming around, attacking humans, if the wolves had rabies, or there was a widespread famine affecting all the living beings, but of course the real wolves hadn't attacked and partly eaten the people you were stumbling over. No. It was the fault of actual humans, who, for nefarious reasons, had made deals with the Devil, and therefore could become wolves whenever they wanted, with the help of magic girdles and whatnot. Your hosts discuss the connection of werewolves with witches in the late middle ages and early modern era. Really, that would be the point of all this. But Anne is fascinated both by real wolves and the fact that it was only Western Europe that was in on this nonsense, on account of Eastern Europe doing other things altogether, and Michelle explains Peter Stubb, who was ONLY a werewolf and not a witch, apparently. Also, John Steinbeck gets involved. Happy Halloween!

The battle of Agincourt was almost over when Henry V ordered the prisoners killed. Nowadays, this would clearly be a war crime, but in 1415, it wasn't, though nobody liked it. Henry did not expect to win the battle, which involved a fairly small bunch of muddy unarmored Englishmen with dysentery up against a formidable line of armored Frenchmen on horses. So he didn't know, when a group of Frenchmen at the rear of their forces attempted to regroup, that they were going nowhere and were not an issue. He thought they were, and that then the Frenchmen at the rear of the English, the war prisoners, would be able to break through, pick up arms from the battlefield, and slaughter the English. The English were all assuming that none of them were going home, but they were fighting as best they could. But as it happens the battle was almost over anyway, and the English won -- they had lost a few hundred men; the French had lost several thousands. Anne is extremely happy, because she gets to talk about the Welsh longbowmen, and Michelle is extremely happy because she gets to tell you where the people of Normandy were hiding whilst Henry and his army roamed around, and believe me, you will not be able to guess where they were. Unless you already have inside knowledge.

Columbus's first trip to what would be called the Americas, in 1492, was a difficult one. Nobody thought he would actually get anywhere, since he had grossly underestimated the size of the globe, but the Spanish monarchs had some extra cash, since the war with the Moors was over, and thought they might as well fund the enterprise, because otherwise one of the other European countries was going to get across the Atlantic first, so they let him have some unneeded ships that were not in good shape (besides being much too small to carry the necessary supplies). He was supposed to find a route across the Atlantic to the Indies; he was supposed to claim any lands he found for Spain; he was supposed to establish colonies and manage them well; he was supposed to bring back lots of nifty stuff. Like gold. When he did arrive on land, there were humans there already, as we know, and they were wearing gold ornaments. So he captured some and demanded that they tell him where they had gotten the gold, but they didn't actually have much, so he enslaved them instead. After that, things got worse. So much worse that even the monarchs of Spain noticed how bad it was, and he was arrested for mismanagement and brutality, found guilty, and stripped of his offices. Michelle found an awesome biography and got immersed in Columbus's religious fanaticism, and Anne got immersed in the Europeans' obsession with water alternatives to the lost Silk Road. It's not a special episode, since we think of Columbus as essentially medieval, but it is a commemorative episode, for Indigenous People's Day.